Jaunpils Castle is located in the village of the same name, it is about 50 km from Jelgava, 25 km from Dobele. The local attraction is one of the few medieval fortresses in Latvia that has survived to the present day. The fortress was built in 1301 as a fortress of the Livonian Order. The castle was founded by the Master of the Order Gottfried von Horn.
The fortress walls are almost 2 metres thick, many believe that there are many people walled up in the many people are believed to have been walled in. In general, this place once had a bad reputation, thanks to the castle's owners, Baron von der Reke. There's a legend that tells how the castle came to belong to Baron Reke. According to legend, there once lived there once lived a landowner named Reke. He was very strong and possessed by the devil. He had a very heavy chair that even his two servants had to carry. So, in anger, he easily took this chair and walked with it like a cane.
One day the landlords were instructed to ride their horses as far as they could over as much territory they could cover, so much land would be theirs. Baron Reka managed to ride round a large area from Saldus to Dobele and from Dobele to Tukums, Jaunpils was thus right in the middle.
Of course, this is just a legend, and in fact Baron Reke received the Jaunpils fortress in a very different way. After the Livonian Order had been defeated, its last master, Gotthard Kettler, swore allegiance to the Polish king in 1561. King Sigismund Augustus appointed Ketler as head of the newly formed Duchy of Courland. However, not all the castle owners were in favour. Then Kettler made a military alliance with Baron Reke. According to this agreement, Kettler, for the assistance of the landowner Rekke, promised to transfer certain districts to him for eternal use. Subsequently, the Duke of Courland did not keep his promise, after which an armed struggle began between Ketler and Reke, which lasted almost 10 years. As a result of this confrontation. Reke only managed to get Jauntspils County together with the fortress. From that time on, the von der Recke family was the owner of this estate until 1920.
There are many stories and legends associated with the von der Recke family, most of them unpleasant, scary and evil. In fact, Matthias von der Recke himself and his descendants were not known for their humanity. For example, there's this story: Baron Matthias built a rectangular area on his estate and enclosed it with stone walls. There he placed 300 Swedish prisoners of war brought back from the war. They lived there there in the open air, doing all the household and building work on the of the Jauntspils estate. When the additional labour was no longer needed, Baron Mathias threw all the prisoners of war into a barn and set fire to it with his own hands. He walked round the barn, warming his hands, and, in answer to the cries of the dying, said, "Well, hear my mice squeak!"
Another of the baron’s descendants, Matthias von der Recke, brought a previously unseen telescope. He used to amuse himself by peeping at the labourers from the castle baths. and frightening them with frightening screams at the most unexpected moment. There's even a story that one labourer died of a broken heart. The baron was watching her, and when she lay down to rest, he screamed so loudly that she died. The rumour went round that the devil himself was telling the Baron everything that was going on. and the nickname "Devil's Reke" took hold. Although Reke himself the nickname was amusing.
There is another story, after which Jauntspils was avoided, especially in bad weather. It was that the baron's younger brother was terribly bored on the estate, especially during bad weather, when there was nothing to do, which made him more often to the bottle more often. Then the baron himself ordered a devil to be built above his window, who howled in an eerie voice during the rain and did not allow him to “relax” with a bottle. It is said that the younger brother gave up drinking. This trait has survived but during the last war, the mechanism by which it made the terrible noise that made him scream so terribly. And the secret of the mechanism has not been discovered to this day.
Today, social life is going on in Jauntspils Castle. Here there are often held all kinds of festivals, events, theatricals theatrical productions. The castle, surrounded by water on three sides and its surroundings, is a picturesque, attractive place for tourists.
